Marc Carter said that he was told by an unnamed Canadian that Canada's constitution was unwritten:
Chris Green pronounced: > Yes, Stephen Black once produced here a technical argument that > portions of the Canadian constitution remain unwritten, but this is > certainly not the standard view of the matter. (After all, there is a > written document that all can plainly see in the Parliamentary library > that > is called the constitution.) All courts refer to various unwritten > legal > traditions. (The "right to privacy" is the most obvious case in > the US.) This does not make their constitutions "unwritten," per se. Um, ignore that man, Marc.The standard view is that the Canadian constitution is part written and part unwritten, the latter following the British constitution from which it descends. Going right to the horse's mouth, a webpage of the Government of Canada (and ignoring the fact that said government is more often described with the other end of the horse) it says: B. The Constitution 42. The Constitution of Canada includes two main documents (the Constitution acts of 1867 and 1982) and a set of unwritten conventions inherited from the British tradition. The focus of the main documents is the division of powers between the Parliament of Canada and the provincial legislatures, and the protection of individual rights and freedoms in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is part of the Constitution Act, 1982. However, the Constitution is silent as to certain essential rules concerning the relationship among the organs of the State. This may be explained by the fact that the Constitution of Canada is based on the same principles as the Constitution of the United Kingdom, where the manner in which political institutions function is governed largely by domestic unwritten rules that are called "constitutional conventions". (from " Human Rights Programme: Core Document forming part of the Reports of States Parties Canada, October 1997, para 42 at http://www.pch.gc.ca/progs/pdp-hrp/docs/core_e.cfm ) Then there's this, also from the horse's mouth: "The Unwritten Constitution Responsible government, one of the most fundamental aspects of Canada's Constitution, is to be found not in the written Constitution, but rather in established custom and precedents. Responsible government and other features of Canadian democracy were fashioned after the British model of government, which, having no formal, written constitution, continues to rely on unwritten constitutional conventions as the basis for parliamentary democracy." (Government of Canada Privy Council Office, http://www.pcobcp.gc.ca/aia/default.asp?Language=E&Page=consfile&Sub=TheHi storyofConstitution http://tinyurl.com/3be8gs See also "Canada in the making: the written and the unwritten constitution" at http://www.canadiana.org/citm/specifique/written_e.pdf And last (in order to avoid contemptuous rejection) there's good old Wikipedia, which says forthrightly in its "Wikibook" (whatever that is): "Canada has both a "written" and "unwritten" constitution." Couldn't have said it better myself. Stephen ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 0C8 Canada Dept web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy TIPS discussion list for psychology teachers at http://faculty.frostburg.edu/psyc/southerly/tips/index.htm ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
